Using my abundance

Over the past years I have collected many cool products, yarns, fabrics, paints, stamps, inks, paper, my list could go on. My sisters and I had a great time shopping for all this stuff. I have started to use, give away or share these items. If you don't use some of them, they dry up and are unusable. So I have sent many of my paper products to my wonderful sister, Kate. She does great work with creative journals, painting, knitting and weaving. You can find her blog at here - The Queen of Creativity.

On Friday, I was lucky to have the day off. I spent it with my friend Pam. She is a very creative knitter and sewer. So we spend the day having fun. I have an extensive supply of rubber stamps and a collection of Lumiere Fabric paints. The paint needs to be used or it will dry in the Jar.

So...

First we stamped on some hand dyed fabric that Pam had dyed. We stamped again later and here are the two samples. I can't wait to make something from them.

I took them home and heat set and washed them. The silver and gold paint had clumped up when I stamped and there was some loss in the washing process.

Then, we dyed some fabrics. I had a collection of dyes my sister Marianne received from a friend of a friend, so we used those.

The colors from left to right, sky blue, plum, amathest, havana brown, some green - I don't remember the name, and peach. Fat quarters to have fun with. A few weeks ago, I visited Pam and we dyed some fabric using mixtures of dyes and this was the results

Soon there will be completed projects with these fabrics to show. The fabric was white bleached muslin. The dyes have a great mottled effect. There are even some spots where the dye did not disolve well and small dots of intense color can be seen.

I brought my serger over with me to make napkins. The serger hadn't seen the light of day for a few years, and we proceeded to kill it trying to get it to work. So we set up Pam's serger and make dinner napkins. She brought fabric at Walmart that she thought my kids would like. Here is the results.

The first ones are camoflage. Having boys, she thought they would use the camo napkins verses flower napkins. The white spots kind of look like sheep grazing if you don't look to close.

This fabric was really cute and a nice thread count for Walmart. Here is a closeup.

So over all we had a great time, stamping, dying and sewing. We even had lunch and walked to the fabric store in town. A Great Day.

It feels good to share. Items can be given to the goodwill etc, but you never know what has become of them. Did they get used or thrown away? I hope to continue this with others. Invite someone over and share your abundance what ever it is.